Frikkee moves to refocus Smith & Williamson UK Equity Income

Smith & Williamson’s Tineke Frikkee is taking steps to refocus her new fund, saying the portfolio “lost its way” in the past.

Frikkee took over the £8.5m Smith & Williamson UK Equity Income fund at the start of July, having previously managed the £2.1bn Newton Higher Income fund. One of her first moves has been to tighten up on the fund’s objectives after conceding that its track record has been “poor”.

“There’s been a bit of refocusing on the objective side, because the fund lost its way a little bit there. The objective is to achieve a high and growing income over the long term,” the manager says. “In the past, the fund’s dividend distribution has been up and down. I believe this is not what clients want.”

Frikkee says unitholders will witness “tremendous growth” in dividend when the fund goes ex-dividend this month, with the final payout for 2013 likely to be around 5.9 per cent – up from 4.8 per cent in 2012. She plans to do this by tilting the portfolio towards yield and dividend growth, while any re-rating of shares would be “icing on the cake”.

Chelsea Financial Services managing director Darius McDermott says: “Tineke has come from a background that had a very rigid process. Newton has since amended that process because it was too rigid. My question to Tineke would be is she going to use that full Newton process or is she going to tweak it to make it less constraining.”

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